What Objects are Involved

Process Overview

A small sample wxPython "Hello world" application will be used to demonstrate the process. I created the tiny application using Boa Constructor but you could use any other IDE you use for your wxPython development. I did the initial creation of the setup.py file with Gui2Exe and then keep maintaining it and running it from the IDE (Boa in my case).

Special Concerns

Python 2.5x

you will need the MS C run time dll 'msvcr71.dll', included with Python

the dll 'gdiplus.dll' might also be needed depending on what wxPython widgets you use

the appname.manifest file (needed to get the nice themed widgets on XP+) can be generated by checking the appropriate option in Gui2Exe

Python 2.6x

you will need the MS C run time dll's (msvcr90.dll, msvcp90.dll, msvcm90.dll), included with Python (additional information provided below)

you will need a copy of the Microsoft.VC90.CRT.manifest file, additional information provided below

the dll 'gdiplus.dll' might also be needed depending on what wxPython widgets you use

The setup.py

Save the following code in your working folder as a file called 'setup.py'.

I selected the "Compressed" option which created two .zip files to reduce the number of files to distribute, it also automagically copied the required dll's needed by Python and wxPython into the "dist" folder.

To deliver a single file to your end-users check out the InnoSetup page.

To "freeze" the application you run the following command from the command line in your working folder.

\python26\python setup.py build

1# Let's start with some default (for me) imports... 2 3fromcx_Freezeimportsetup, Executable 4 5 6 7# Process the includes, excludes and packages first 8 9includes = [] 10excludes = ['_gtkagg', '_tkagg', 'bsddb', 'curses', 'email', 'pywin.debugger', 11'pywin.debugger.dbgcon', 'pywin.dialogs', 'tcl', 12'Tkconstants', 'Tkinter'] 13packages = [] 14path = [] 15 16# This is a place where the user custom code may go. You can do almost 17# whatever you want, even modify the data_files, includes and friends 18# here as long as they have the same variable name that the setup call 19# below is expecting. 20 21# No custom code added 22 23# The setup for cx_Freeze is different from py2exe. Here I am going to 24# use the Python class Executable from cx_Freeze 25 26 27GUI2Exe_Target_1 = Executable( 28# what to build 29script = "simplewx.py", 30initScript = None, 31base = 'Win32GUI', 32targetDir = r"dist", 33targetName = "simplewx.exe", 34compress = True, 35copyDependentFiles = True, 36appendScriptToExe = False, 37appendScriptToLibrary = False, 38icon = None 39 ) 40 41 42# That's serious now: we have all (or almost all) the options cx_Freeze 43# supports. I put them all even if some of them are usually defaulted 44# and not used. Some of them I didn't even know about. 45 46setup( 47 48version = "0.1", 49description = "No Description", 50author = "No Author", 51name = "cx_Freeze Sample File", 52 53options = {"build_exe": {"includes": includes, 54"excludes": excludes, 55"packages": packages, 56"path": path 57 } 58 }, 59 60executables = [GUI2Exe_Target_1] 61 ) 62 63# This is a place where any post-compile code may go. 64# You can add as much code as you want, which can be used, for example, 65# to clean up your folders or to do some particular post-compilation 66# actions. 67 68# No post-compilation code added 69 70 71# And we are done. That's a setup script :-D

The MS manifest

Following is the content of the Microsoft manifest file ("Microsoft.VC90.CRT.manifest"), note that the content of "version" and "publicKeyToken" are specific to the version of the dll files.

Installing Python 2.6 on Windows with the option "for this user only" this manifest file is created in the Python26 folder, note the Py26 installer does not offer the "for this user only" option on Vista.

If you install Python 2.6 for all users then these files are found in "C:\Windows\winsxs", i.e. in "C:\Windows\winsxs\Manifests" you will find guess what the manifest and it would be called "x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.21022.8_none_bcb86ed6ac711f91.manifest" and then in "C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.21022.8_none_bcb86ed6ac711f91" you will find the dll's.

Note that the folder names contain the version number, so with Python 2.6.2 you should use version 9.0.21022.8 manifest and dll's.